Chapter Text
For the first nineteen years of his life, Jason got used to sleeping alone. The first half of those years were in his childhood home--if you could call it a home--where he knew from the time he could walk that bothering his father at night would bring trouble. Then there were the years at the manor. His new father was more willing to listen to his thoughts, and maybe even to care about them, but there was still a naturally intimidating aura around the man that kept Jason from wandering the halls at night to knock on his door in search of comfort.
Then, for a year or so, he'd slept alone in his grave. It was easier for him to think of it as sleeping. Waking up was the real nightmare.
He reached manhood in the League of Assassins, a time he could now barely recall, but he certainly hadn't been taking lovers left and right. Looking back, a part of him was surprised. The Lazarus Pit had done him the great service of correcting his body, shaping it effortlessly and without the scarring he would've needed otherwise. He should have finally felt free to explore his love life. But there was never any time. And when he finally settled down from his vengeance-fueled rage, he realized there was no interest, either. Not until he was freshly twenty, which lead him to this very predicament.
The recent shift from living with Roy in a bro way to living with Roy in a definitely not just bros way had been a welcome but jarring adjustment. And the best and worst of it all was sharing his bed.
Pros? Roy was a human heater, and he made Jason feel safe, to a degree that was honestly laughable in their line of work. Cons? Roy had long hair that got stuck in his mouth a lot, and he was a light enough sleeper that he woke up with every single one of Jason's nightmares. And considering he was murdered by a clown when he was in high school, those came almost every night.
It was during one of his post-nightmare hazes, green tinting his vision and strong arms around his shoulders keeping him safe from the laughter, that the archer hit him with a question out of nowhere.
"Have you ever had a dog?"
Roy's casual tone was such a startling shift that Jason's brain had to stop and then reboot. Loading... loading...
A lot of his memories from before the Pit... before his death... were vague and scrambled at best, downright inaccessible at worst, but his early childhood was left more intact than his teen years. Most of those memories were shit, of course: Willis screaming, Mom singing him to sleep while she was strung out on the couch, the constant cacophony of sirens and screams at night. But that made the brighter ones easier to find. They stuck out like a damn sore thumb.
"Sparky," he answered, trying to ground himself in Roy's embrace. "We had him when I was a kid, in the alley. He was a good fuckin' dog, too. He'd scare off robbers and shit. Probably why Willis kept him around. It wasn't 'cause we could afford him; that's for sure."
"Did you like him?"
Jason snorted. "'Course I liked him. I was a kid, and he was a good dog. Pitbull mix, dunno what else, tan 'n white. He had this grin like you wouldn't believe, smiling all the damn time. I loved that dog. I missed him a lot."
Before you forgot him, the raspy voice of the Pit lashed out at him, but he was practiced by now at ignoring it. Dramatic ass sludge. Sparky ran away the day his dad was arrested, and Jason cried like a baby that night. Forgetting about it was probably for the best. He didn't realize he'd started zoning out again until Roy replied, and he forced himself to focus on his partner's words.
"You knooow..." Uh oh. "I've been reading a little about ESAs lately. Emotional Support Animals, you know. And they can be really helpful with PTSD. I'm not saying you have to do anything, but I could at least send you some articles, and you could look them over? Or we could just get a dog because we want to. Either way, I think it might help, Jay."
"I don't need help."
The look Roy gave him spoke for himself. It was infuriating. He bit down on his lip before the Pit could get ahold of him.
"Fine. I'll look into it."
"Thank you--"
"Because I love dogs. Not for you."
The older man raised a well-plucked red eyebrow. "Not for me? So it's not at all important that I'm in bed with you?"
"Don't push it, Harper."
"Mm."
By the time Jason felt tired again, Roy snoring softly in his ear, the alarm clock by the bed--which was analog, not digital, at Jason's request--read 9:43 AM. Fuuuuck. They'd both gone to bed at 2 after patrol, tucking in damn early by Bat standards, and he'd woken up around 4 in the morning. Now, even if he fell fully asleep by 10 and slept in until noon (which wasn't uncommon in a vigilante household), he'd only be able to grab 4 hours in total. Which would be more than fine, if he hadn't been doing a similar dance for nearly a week.
He was damn tired, and not just in his body but in his soul, like there was something cold and heavy weighing down the marrow in his bones. Roy was fairing better, of course, but he could tell this wasn't easy on the other man either. The man who had welcomed him into his bed and made him feel safe and warm was uncomfortable because of Jason's own inability to self-regulate.
Fucking fucking fuck fuck fucker fucking fuck. With a long sigh, he got out his phone and opened the first link Roy had sent him: Canine Therapy in the Treatment of C-PTSD in Adults.
And he started to read.